


How Not To Rescue A Princess

by Lady_With_A_Top_Hat



Category: Original Work
Genre: A Dragon - Freeform, A bratty princess, A cheerful hero, An evil enchntress, Blood, Gen, I don't know if anyone will actually read this, Preteen characters, Slight hero/villain, The story starts off bad but gets better at the middle, Thorny vines, Yarn serpents, but I'm posting it anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26931871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_With_A_Top_Hat/pseuds/Lady_With_A_Top_Hat
Summary: Sunny, a beginner hero, jumps at the chance to save her kingdom's princess from an evil enchantress. However, she discovers that she perhaps isn't as hero-like as she thought she was.Basically, I wrote this long story for a school assignment and I wanted to post it here too.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character





	How Not To Rescue A Princess

The knight rode gracefully on his brown steed. It was the fastest stallion in the castle stables. It was a horse even the queen and king had rode on before. Simply put, it was an honor to ride on the steed.

Speedily he approached the quaint little village up ahead. The townsfolk were living their lives and doing their duties as if today wasn’t a historical day of great panic. Granted, they had yet to be informed of the troublesome news.

As soon as he rode through the entrance of the town, heads turned towards the knight. Their faces showed a variety of different emotions. Some people were confused, others were frightened, a few were excited, and a couple of elders were just too old to care.

“Hear ye! Hear ye!” The knight shouted from atop his stallion. “Princess Jessica has been kidnaped and is now being held for ransom.”

Gasps arose from most of the villagers. However, after the unexpected statement, all except for one of them slowly returned to their work.

The only citizen to not turn away was a small cloaked figure. They stepped towards the knight and the royal horse and asked “Can a townsperson rescue the princess?”

The knight shrugged. “I guess, but if you tried you’d get yourself kil-“

“YES! FINALLY, SOMETHING TO DO!” the mysterious stranger yelled in complete and utter joy. Then, they sped off towards the exit of the town before turning around and asking “Wait, where’s the kidnaper's headquarters?”

The knight had no idea where the villain was keeping the princess, and this person was slowing him down. So, in an attempt to get them out of the way, the knight pointed westward. Coincidentally, this was the exact direction that the royal was being locked up in.

So, the somewhat gullible stranger ran in the direction the knight had pointed. Their navy boots collided noisily with the rocky stone road beneath them, propelling them quickly across the path that led them out of the city. Their midnight blue cape fluttered behind them in the wind. This exposed a simple, slightly poofy, yellow dress with a light green piece of fabric tying the clothing down to their waist. Beneath the dress was white tights and oddly enough, yellow socks covering these tights. This was an interesting clothing style that would never become a trend. 

They were running so fast that their cloak was yanked back by the wind revealing the face of an eleven-year-old girl. Her dark brown hair had been neatly tied into two low and frizzy pigtails. Her round face had small ears, light green eyes, and a wide grin.

This little girl’s name was Sunny. She was a self-proclaimed hero.

Sunny was still somewhat new to being a hero. Sure, she had saved some pig’s lives from a pig-eating wolf. Yes, she had helped a family of three bears with a home invasion. True, she had performed the Heimlich to help a grandma get out of the stomach of a wolf. Still, all that was simple stuff, nothing too complicated or dangerous. Rescuing a royal hostage from some person powerful enough to get past all the guards in the kingdom? Well, that was a major feat. It was about time something like this happened that needed heroicing. This would be the perfect thing to show just how much of a hero she truly was.  
  
Eventually, after around half a day of traveling, Sunny found what could only be described big and dangerous-looking. On a small obsidian isle not too far away from her there was an obsidian dome. The dome had lava oozing down it as though the structure was ice cream drizzled with hot fudge. Behind this curved building were walls of red thorny vines clumped together like spaghetti. Beyond the garden of red plants was something…

Specifically, something that Sunny was unable to see. Just in case you needed clarification.

Suddenly, the voice of a girl her age spoke. “I see that you somehow managed to find my little hiding place.”

Sunny spun around on the heel of her boot to face the speaker. “No offense, but you must be terrible at hide and seek.” Sunny looked behind her. “Also, this place definitely isn’t little.”

The girl in front of her was, as Sunny assumed, the evil person who had kidnaped her kingdom’s princess, and, gosh, she did look like a villain. She was dressed in a violet gown that hugged her chest, waist, and hips, but it poofed out gorgeously, falling to the ground and colliding with dirt. Perhaps the dress was just a little bit too long for the outdoors. Although the gown was a bit too mature for her age, the somewhat long, black, caplet she was wearing made the dress look a lot more modest. Nevertheless, it was an odd fashion choice. The evil girl’s hands and the majority of the skin on her arms were shielded from the air with violet fabric that perfectly matched her dress. The girl’s long, light blonde hair was tied into a loose ponytail elegantly draped across her shoulder. Her face was sharp, her nose was pointy, her lips were small, and her ears were averaged sized.

The girl was beautiful, there was certainly no doubt about that. But, in Sunny’s personal opinion, her prettiest physical characteristic was her eyes. They weren’t blue, nor green, or even brown. Her eyes were purple.

The girl’s purple eyes rolled in annoyance. “Yes. Yes. Run along now.”

Sunny grinned. Clearly this girl underestimated her.

The cloaked child smoothly pulled out an impressively dangerous looking sword from her light green fabric belt. “So, what do I gotta do? Defeat you so you let go of the princess? Or is there more to it?”

The evil girl in front of her muttered something under her breath before replying. “You can put that away. I’m obviously a projection.”

“A projection?”

“Yes, duh.”

“…Care to explain what that is?”

She sighed. “Basically, it means that this is just a magical image of me. I’m not actually here. If you tried to stab me you would be slicing colorful smoke…They really need to have a better school system for you humans.”

“You’re not a human?”

“Clearly not.” The child frowned.

“Anyways,” Sunny said as she turned back around on her heel to face the dangers ahead of her. “I’ve got a hostage to rescue.”

“If you think you can just waltz right on in, you’re an idiot. Just turn around and don’t come back.”

“Hmmm…do I skip right on in instead of waltzing? Or is crab-walking better?”

Before her enemy could answer, Sunny looked back at her and grinned. “It’s a joke! I’m just gonna walk in regularly.”

“You’ll get killed.” Then, she said as an afterthought “I’m only worried about your health because you’re going to die in a ridiculously gruesome way, and blood is not easy to clean, even with magic.”

“Ooooh! Scary!” Sunny sarcastically replied.

Then, Sunny stepped forth on her not-so-long journey. 

Boots clacking nosily on the obsidian beneath her, she sped down the black bridge. The other girl had to run as well to keep up with her. It didn’t take long for the two to arrive at the structure where Sunny’s first heroic challenge awaited her.

Before her was a round dome made up of obsidian bricks with strikingly pearly white cement that separated the black chiseled stones in a most orderly fashion. Glowing orange lava oozed out from the top of the dome and down its rounded sides. Fixed into the building was a pair of flat obsidian doors that altered the domes complete roundness with their lack of ability to curve into the right shape. 

“Woah…” Sunny said, examining the dangerously awesome looking building. “This is really cool,” she commented in appreciation. Then, she asked “did you build this?”

Her mysterious enemy frowned at the obsidian dome. “In a way. I used magic to create it, but besides the wave my wand, I didn’t do anything.”

Sunny hummed in thoughtful appreciation.

“If you want to,” the non-human girl responded “you can break off one of those bricks, I don’t mind.”

Sunny looked back at her, a confused, yet wide smile sat smugly on her face. “You can’t just pull off bricks from a building. That’s what cement’s for.” Sunny proceeded to look back at the obsidian doors that were only yards away from her. With her sword in her right hand, she used her left arm to push open the door. Surprisingly, the obsidian door was actually pretty lightweight.

Marching inside the dome, she politely held the door open for her adversary to walk through. While she did so, she let her eyes adjust to limited amount of light in the building. At the very center of the structure there laid a dragon with smooth white scales. It had wings that looked similar to a bats folded along its serpent like body. The animal seemed to be sleeping as its body slowly rose and fell.

Sunny was hoping for a dragon. After all, you couldn’t truly save a princess without fighting a dragon. The heroine carefully walked up to the sleeping creature and raised her sword directly over its neck. Sure, murdering it while it was asleep wasn’t exactly fair, but she needed to kill it. After all, heroes were supposed to slaughter dragons. It’s kinda their main thing. At least it would be a peaceful death.

The handle of her longsword was dark blue with bands of silver snaking down it. Right in the center of the handle was a green oval-shaped jewel that sat there simply for decoration. The actual blade of her longsword was steel, long, straight, and sharp. Although it might not have cut through flesh like butter, it was still a powerful weapon. However, before Sunny could swing her sword down upon its neck, her feet were swept powerfully to her right and she fell roughly on her side.

“Ow.”

The dragons tail was to blame for this sudden annoyance, it had swept Sunny’s legs and knocked her to the ground. Sunny grumbled as she got herself to her feet. The heroine figured the dragon was either secretly awake, or it just happened to move its tail in its sleep.

She was about to make her second attempt of slicing through its flesh when the dragon’s tail swept her legs once again, causing her to drop her sword in the process. This time, she fell onto her bum. The dragon’s red eyes snapped open and it stood up on its four legs. But it didn’t do this to attack her, instead it merely waltzed off to another, more comfortable place in the dome.

Sighing in frustration, Sunny grabbed her sword from the floor and ran fearsomely at the animal’s neck. The creature had no trouble noticing the small, cloaked human running towards it. So, it craned its snake-like neck towards the girl and nipped her arm before laying its head once again on the ground to catch some more Zs.

“OWWW!” Sunny yelled.

Sunny’s bite injury was a burning, agonizing, pain. She felt the incredibly strong need to get rid of the pain, but she couldn’t. It was still there. It still felt terrible. It was worse than any pain she’d ever felt before. Sunny looked down at her arm to see whether or not her injury warranted her strong reaction. Teeth marks were embedded a couple centimeters deep into her flesh. Despite this, her wounds weren’t bleeding. This was because her flesh was burnt and crispy like a marshmallow toasted for too long over a campfire.

That kinda made sense, fire breathing dragons having fire teeth.

“You can turn back now,” the other girl noted, trying to hide the worried expression on her face. “Or you could just sneak past the dragon who obviously doesn’t care about attacking you.”

“That’s silly,” Sunny replied through clenched teeth. “It should be afraid of me. I’m a hero.”

“This dragon eats hero’s for lunch.” The girl’s gaze flicked to the animal in question and she said with a glare “or at least it could if it didn’t lay around all day doing absolutely nothing.”

Sunny pulled herself to her feet and gripped her weapon once more before running at the dragon again, this time she aimed for the stomach. Rather than bite her again, the dragon wrapped its tail around her legs and slammed her into one of the domes walls. Obsidian bricks buried Sunny and pearly white liquid mortar spilled everywhere but never absorbed into anything, similar to water droplets on glass. It was enough to make the poor girl go unconscious.

  
**—————————————————**

  
Goodness knows how long it took for Sunny to wake up. However, when she did, she found herself no longer buried in obsidian bricks but unfortunately still covered in milky mortar.

Her eyes blinked open to the pretty blue sky. Tufts of cotton floated softly on a canvas of light blue. It was a pretty sight, unless the sun was directly overhead. If it was, you would get blinded by the light and wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“Oh look, you’re finally awake,” a familiar voice said. “I was beginning to think that you died.”

Sunny propped herself up. “It’ll take a lot more than that to kill me.” The heroine’s head hurt. She must’ve slammed into that obsidian wall pretty harshly. Speaking of obsidian…where was the bricks? Sunny remembered feeling the bricks of the wall she had slammed into go loose. Also, now there was just a big chunk of the obsidian dome missing. So the bricks must’ve gone somewhere. “Where’s the brick-thingies?”

“I moved them.” Her foe stated as she stared into the distance, facing a different direction than Sunny.

Sunny cocked her head to the side. “But aren’t you a projection or something?”

“Yes, so?” The girl said a bit defensively.

Rising to her feet, Sunny walked towards the villain. Then, without warning, she stuck her hand through her foe’s caplet-covered shoulder. Her hand went right through and black smoke danced in-between her fingers. It was pretty cool looking. “If you’re made of smoke, you couldn’t have lifted those bricks, right?”

The girl’s eyes scrunched shut. “Since you’re so intrusive on my personal life, then you’ll be happy to know that I temporarily dissolved this projection, walked here, used some magic, removed the bricks, and walked back to my lair. Happy now?”

Sunny blinked in surprise. “You’re the villain. You aren't supposed to help me.”

“Don’t rub it in,” her enemy hissed.

A pause settled between the pair.

“Well, thanks anyways. That was very nice—I mean, not nice of you…” Sunny awkwardly said as she held out her hand for a handshake.

The other girl looked down at Sunny’s hand. “Remember, I’m a projection."

“Ah, yep, forgot about that,” Sunny quickly replied. She removed her hand and dropped it to her side, flinching as it collided with the cold liquid mortar her dress was coated in. The curious girl pointed to her dress. “So, what exactly is this stuff.” Her enemy was about to respond when Sunny stopped her. “Wait! I wanna guess!”

Sunny started pacing back and forth. Suddenly, her head turned to the other girl. “Is it custard made from the dragon’s scales?”

“No,” her foe replied.

“What about…condensed snow!”

“Nope, physically impossible,” the girl answered in slight amusement.

“Oh, I know! It’s glue!”

“Do you give up?”

Sunny deflated. “Yea. What is it?”

“Magic cement.”

“Oh yea, you can do magic stuff. I forgot about that.”

“I wasn’t lying when I said you could just pull one of these bricks off,” the villain stated. “This is my temporary hideout. I’m a bit of a nomad, and its much easier to pack bricks than it is to pack an entire building. So…” The girl taped the dome. Soft purple smoke replaced the tip of her finger. “The cement is easy to remove, making this entire thing very fragile but rainproof.”

Nodding, Sunny walked back inside the obsidian dome. The lazy dragon inside of it was still sleeping, or at least pretending to sleep. It's loud snores filled the air most annoyingly as its body rose up and down in a slow, steady beat. If it really cared about killing her, which it was entirely capable of, it would’ve done so already. The hero sighed and picked up her sword from the ground.

“What are you doing?” Her rival asked.

Sunny looked behind her. “I’m gonna slay your dragon.”

Her adversary facepalmed and said “if you try that, you will die. My dragon will unintentionally slaughter you, and it isn’t even entirely awake. It slammed you into the wall like it was tossing a ball.”

Sunny turned fully around to face the villain. “I’m a hero, I kinda have to slay the dragon. It's what heroes do.”

“The thing is, you don’t actually need to slay it. You could just ignore the dragon,” the girl said in frustration.

“Heroes don’t do that.”

“Heroes also don’t let their pride kill them. Besides, how are you going to save some dumb princess if you’re dead?”

“I won’t die.”

The pair paused for around a minute before Sunny began walking away from the dragon and towards the two doors leading onto her next challenge. “Okay, yea, you’re right, I’d die.”

“Now you’re seeing reason.”

With that, the pair left the sleepy mass of scales in the comfort of its obsidian dome-home, and began to walk to Sunny’s next challenge.

  
**—————————————————**

  
“Hey,” Sunny asked. “What’s your name?”

“My name’s Lexi,” The villain responded.

“Ooooh, I like it! It suits…whatever you are.”

“I’m an enchantress.”

“Oh!” The girl exclaimed in surprise. “I’ve heard some really bad stuff about your species. Is any of it true?”

“Probably.” Lexi shrugged casually. The small body movement was enough to distract Sunny from the almost sad look in Lexi’s eyes. “Enchantresses are very evil people.”

“And yet you helped me when I was unconscious,” Sunny noted, her voice almost teasing.

Lexi went silent.

“Don’t bring that up again or turn your liver into mush.”

“Okay! Okay! I won’t!”

After a few moments of silence, Lexi asked “What’s yours?”

“Hm?”

“Your name. What is it?”

“Oh! My name’s Sunny.”

“I like that name, it suits a human.”

Sunny grinned “agreed.”

**—————————————————**

The duo soon arrived at a forest on the obsidian island made of thorny wine-red vine bushes. In fact, there were so many thorny bushes it was more accurate to say there were patches of empty space than there were patches of vines. However, the entire field wasn’t just a solid mass of vines. There was corridors and pathways in the clumps of tangled up plants that made it possible to travel from one side of the forest of vines to the other side. In short, it was a massive maze full of thorny vines that could probably snag onto your clothing really easily.

“Impressed?” Lexi asked.

“Am I allowed to be impressed by something a villain did?” A genuinely unsure Sunny asked.

“I don’t know.”

The two girls settled into a state of silence for a few moments before Sunny piped up again. “So, this is like one of those hedge maze thingies, right?”

“You could say that.”

“Cool!” Sunny exclaimed. “I’ve never done one of these things before!”

The cheerful hero ran to the entrance of the maze, and gagged a little bit from the vines wretched smell. Their scent was reminiscent of iron and rust.

“Wait,” Lexi warned. “A word of advice: don’t stop moving.”

“Okay!” Sunny happily said, despite the nasty smell that was invading her nostrils.  
Then, with the demeanor of someone who wasn’t risking her life, Sunny excitedly ran into the maze.

  
**—————————————————**

  
The longer Sunny travelled, the more bored she became. The whole point of heroicing was to have fun…and do good stuff…but mostly, it was to have fun. And this wasn’t fun. Not at all. So, she struck up a casual conversation with her enemy. Because that was what you were supposed to do, engage in friendly conversation with your foe.

“Hey, Lexi. Ya still there?” Sunny asked.   
  
“Yes. I’ve got nothing better to do” Lexi replied with a sigh.

Lexi’s voice sounded far away, so Sunny looked behind her. Lexi was a few yards behind her so Sunny stopped moving and turned around to wait for the enchantress to catch up. Lexi wasn’t looking at her, instead her pretty purple eyes were softly scanning the rows of thorny vines and how spiky red tips jutted out of them. “Ya know, if I wasn’t a hero I guess I would be impressed by this whole thing,” Sunny casually admitted. “It must’ve taken you a lot of magic to make this.”

A flicker of a smile appeared on Lexi’s face. “It did. Even if deadly vines do grow quickly, it takes a lot of energy to make them grow at this rate. I have to wait another month to build up that much power again.”

“Deadly?"

Lexi looked up at Sunny, now she was less than a yard away from her. Lexi’s calm facial expression morphed into an expression of fear and panic. The villain could see that one of the vines was slowly and silently encircling the heroine’s left arm, completely covering it. If her foe’s eyes were to land on the dangerous vine, the plant would tighten. Its thorns would stab into her flesh and havoc would ensue.

“What?” Sunny worriedly asked upon noticing Lexi’s fearful expression. Then, she began to turn her head to follow her adversary’s line of sight. But, before her eyes could land on the vine around her arm, Lexi’s gloved hands flew to her eyes. As soon as she touched her rival’s head, her hand’s fake formation broke, and whips of purple smoke danced in front of Sunny’s eyes.

In a scarily serious tone of voice, Lexi said “do what I tell you to do if you want to make it out of this maze alive.”

“Ummm…okay…”

“First things first, close your eyes.”

Hesitantly, Sunny shut her green eyes. The world became and endless sea of black, devoid of the wine red hedges all around her and the tan dying grass that grew beneath her feet.

“Good,” Lexi’s serious voice said. “Now, I want you to move your left hand forwards very slowly.”

Doing as she was told, Sunny slowly pulled her hand out of the cage of vines surrounding her hand. Unfortunately, the thorns on the slender plants began to magically rotate and adjust themselves. The organic spikes crawled across their vines and aimed for Sunny’s hand.

Lexi took in a sharp inhale. Any moment now the vines would tighten their grip on Sunny’s arm and pierce her flesh. They were very sharp thorns.

“MOVE IT QUICKLY! MOVE IT QUICKLY!” Lexi yelled in panic.

Sunny whipped her arm forwards. Just as her arm and hand were completely free from the cage of vines, the thorny plants tightened far too quickly to be believable. Luckily for Sunny, they didn’t catch her arm in their trap.

Lexi cursed under her breath. That quick movement may have been good for short term survival but not good for long term survival. The vines attacked their prey best when their victim didn’t realize what was happening. They were like groups of assassins sent out to kill somebody. First, they surrounded them. Then, they got their weapons out. And lastly, they went for the kill. However, similar to assassins, if their target realized what was going on, their cover was blown. In this sort of situation, they would resort to plan B. Plan B was where all the assassins jump out from their hiding spots and violently attempt to murder their target.

The vines were pretty good at telling when their prey noticed their presence. Quick movement away or direct eye contact with a moving vine were signs that they had been spotted. 

“Okay, open your eyes and walk forwards like you’re walking normally again,” Lexi commanded. Sunny complied with her instructions and did exactly that. Meanwhile, Lexi walked backwards in front of her so that she could keep an eye on both Sunny and the plants behind her. Lexi was hoping that if Sunny’s body movements showed that she was acting completely normally, then the vines would be tricked into believing that she didn’t suspect a thing. Even vines knew how unperceptive humans were.

Thorny plants who were previously quickly snaking their way towards Sunny’s back, stopped and retreated back into their hedgy homes.

“Good,” Lexi said with a sigh of relief. “They’re buying it.”

“Who’s buying it?” The very confused Sunny asked. “I don’t see anybody.”

“That’s intentional. They don’t want you to see them.”

“Okay, but who is ‘they’?”

“‘They’ aren’t something you need to worry about.” All but a few of the plants had retreated back into their hedges. Now they were simply waiting for Sunny to stop moving around so much to make their next secretive killing attempt. Luckily, that wouldn’t happen again. Lexi told herself that she would make sure Sunny didn’t stop moving. 

Suddenly, the simple question appeared in the enchantress’s mind. Why did she want to help Sunny? Probably to have the satisfaction of killing the cheerful girl in person…yeah, probably…

Suddenly, Sunny stopped walking. “I’m not going to keep walking normally until you tell me exactly what’s going on.” Sunny’s arms were crossed, her expression was of defiance, and her confidence…well there was just too much of it.

“No, you dummy” Lexi said in complete frustration and annoyance. “Keep moving, or you’ll die.”

“That’s exactly why you should tell me what’s going on, so that I don’t die,” Sunny argued in an innocent, but confident, tone.

Lexi saw how a nearby vine was slinking and wrapping itself around the girl’s pretty neck. It wasn’t touching her skin yet, of course. It was merely taking its time and being precise until it went for the kill. Lexi sadly sighed. If it was wrapping around her neck then there would be no escape route. Sunny was doomed. “Do you have any last words before it kills you?” Lexi asked. As a villain, it was always polite to ask for one’s last words.

“No! What’s going on?!” Sunny was clearly afraid now. 

Lexi didn’t blame her be being sacred. After all, she had just asked her to say her last words. “Surrounding your neck is a special, deadly, vine. After enough of it has wound around your neck, and its thorns have been adjusted for maximum pain, then it will tighten up and choke you to death.”

Sunny’s eyes went wide.

“And, if it realizes that you know it’s there,” Lexi continued. “It will kill you even quicker.” After a moment of silence, Lexi concluded “basically, you’re doomed.” Sunny was very panicked. Lexi half expected her to say “I’m too young to die!”, but alas, she did not. The girl had a few more seconds to live. Unfortunately, her last words were terrible and she wasn’t using these last few seconds of life to think up anything better to say.

Fortunately, before her few seconds were up, an idea formed in Sunny’s head. The hero’s hand flew to the green fabric around her waist and pulled out her trusty longsword. Then, without even glancing at it, she slashed the vine in half. The part of the vine that was preparing to tighten up around her neck went slack. As soon as her blade cut the vine, more of the literally bloodthirsty plants began to rapidly approach Sunny from every angle.

Lexi, mouth agape, watched as Sunny dodged her way through the vines in an attempt to escape them. She was doing a great job at it. Sadly, Lexi knew that she probably wouldn’t make it out alive. Plan B was brutal, and although it was harder work for the plants, it was a far more effective killing method than Plan A. If Sunny was going to make it out of here alive, she would need Lexi’s help. And, the only way for Lexi to help her out was if she was there in person.

Lexi knew what she needed to do.

  
**—————————————————**

  
“Ugh! You dumb stupid ugly witch! Let me out of here!”

Lexi gritted her teeth in frustration.

“You smell like trash!”

Lexi smelled absolutely fine.

“This cage is stupid and rusty and I hate it. I demand that you get me a better cage!”

The young enchantress couldn’t take the girl’s unending whining. “Do you want me to tear out your voice box? Because I have a lovely little spell that’ll do that for me…”

Fear flashed in the other girl’s blue eyes and she covered her mouth with her hands.

“Thats what I thought, _Princess_.”

Lexi didn’t have a spell that could remove somebody’s voice box.

The villain dashed towards her scepter. It was a long, silver wand with an onyx at the top of it. The wand seemed to glow with magic as she grabbed it. 

Then, kicking off her black flats, she quickly grabbed her very low-heeled simple black boots. Slipping on the sensible shoes, Lexi then shoved her laces inside of them to save time.   
  
Admittedly, Lexi was terrified of any tall heels. Despite having impressive balancing skills, she was very worried that if she wore anything with a high heel, she’d fall and break her head. The enchantress felt a lot safer riding on a dragon than wearing high-heels.

Running out of the entrance to her obsidian cave, Lexi dashed towards the flat plane of her obsidian island. It was a nice island. Nothing was there. It gave off a cold, eerie sort of vibe. It was perfect for an evil enchantress such as herself.

Rushing across an obsidian pathway, she arrived at her garden of thorns and vines.  
Lexi gagged at the smell. It smelt like blood, specifically enchantress blood. That only made sense, of course. After all, the plant’s seeds were made from her own blood. Powerful magic required sacrifices.

Rather than running through the maze of dangerous red plants, she stood in front of one of the hedges. Impatiently, Lexi watched as the vines reached towards her. Rather than trying to trap her, though, they wove themselves together, forming stairs. With her hands tugging up the bottom portion of her mermaid dress, Lexi ran atop the hedges of vines. Her boots shielded her far better than her flats could do from the thorns beneath her.

Of course, the plants knew who the enchantress was. They had an interesting sort-of-sense that could detect blood. Now that she was here in person, they were able to recognize her presence as a living thing rather than a bunch of colored smoke. The vines knew her blood had created them, they knew she was their master. The plants wouldn’t be that helpful to her if they didn’t recognize who she was and treat her accordingly.

Lexi scanned the world around her. Her eyes were focused on detecting any sort of movement. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see anything. That probably meant her vines had killed Sunny. A sad frown settled on her face. Then, she shook her head. She shouldn’t get sad over the death of some human hero. Besides, Sunny was a distraction and waste of energy. It was good that she was dead.

Suddenly, one of the vines tapped her arm. Lexi looked down at it. The plant proceeded to point forwards and a bit downwards.

Was the vine trying to tell her where the girl was? Maybe. But really, even if Sunny was alive she shouldn’t bother with her. No matter what, she had to die. Lexi stood there for a moment. The wind blew gently through her blonde hair. The plants writhed below her as they struggled to support her weight. The sound of her breath as it softly blew in and out through her nostrils was all she could hear. It was a moment of decision.

Surprising herself, Lexi ran in the the direction of focus.

**—————————————————**

Sunny painstakingly tried to reach towards her weapon. It was lying only a few feet away from her. The golden sun shone down upon it most purely, but the vines surrounding it imprisoned her weapon so evily.

Sunny yelped as the vine around her waist pulled tighter. The thorns might’ve been long enough to kill a bird, but they weren’t too damaging to a human, at least not when they were around one’s waist. Thankfully, none of the vines had tried to wrap around her neck again. That certainly would’ve been fatal.

Sitting against the hedge, she felt like a child. She was so helpless, like a fly caught in the net of a spider. Her free right arm tried to tug on the vines around her stomach. “Hey,” she sadly asked the vines with a small, fake, smile. "Mind if you give me a little breathing room?”

The plant, of course, didn’t respond.

Go figure.

Usually Sunny could do something to get out of a bad situation. A clever idea would come to her head right in the nick of time. Like when when she was saving some twins from an evil, cannibalistic, axe-wielding witch and had gotten cornered by the mean hag. Before her bloody axe had crashed into her skull, Sunny had thrown the mean woman into her own oven.  
Now, in a way, she was like the witch, slowly dying and unable to get out of her troublesome situation.

Removing her hand from her vine corset, Sunny saw it was now covered in crimson.  
At least she would die a hero. Then, she felt a tingle on the back of her neck. Sunny yanked her head forwards and looked behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a vine approaching her. It was going towards her neck. “No!” Sunny grunted as she struggled against her vines. She honestly preferred a slow and painful death over a quick and painful one. 

The vine looped in front of her neck, its thorns pushed into her skin. So, the hero yanked her head back, pulling it out of the now bloody thorns.

Suddenly, somebody jumped down from seemingly nowhere and landed with her back facing Sunny. 

It looked to be the villain of the hour: Lexi.

The girl speedily turned herself around and tugged on the vines around Sunny’s waist. To the hero’s surprise, her fingers didn’t turn into gas. Perhaps that meant that she wasn’t a projection anymore.

All of the vines that covered Sunny quickly retreated to their hedgy-homes. With her cheerfulness rapidly returning, Sunny grinned and beamed up at her foe. “Well I didn’t expect that!”

The unsmiling Lexi was staring at her bloody stomach. “Are you feeling faint?”

“A liiiiittle bit,” Sunny said, dragging out the i in a silly way. Then, the young hero unlaced one of her boots and pulled out a messy lump of cotton bandages from the bottom of her shoe. “Luckily, I have some medical supplies,” Sunny declared. “A hero should always bring medical supplies with her.” Sunny tore her bloody cloak of off her with her right arm and began to wrap the bandages around her waist. Lexi noted how her face contorted into one of pain as she did this task.

The enchantress sat down on the ground next to her foe. “Why does it hurt so much when you put that on?” Lexi said as she pointed to the other girl’s strips of cotton.

“Don’t worry,” Sunny replied with a fake smile. ”It doesn’t.”

Liar.

Lexi watched as her adversary attempted to use only her right arm to wrap it around her waist, which she failed at miserably. Lexi’s eyes travelled to her left arm. It was quite bloody. There were crimson imprints of thorns on both the upper and lower portions of the left limb.  
Lexi understood why Sunny wasn’t using this arm. The muscles in it were all torn up. It must’ve been very painful to move.

Without giving the hero any sort of warning, Lexi grabbed the long bandage from Sunny and started wrapping it around her waist for her.

“Umm…” Sunny mumbled, blushing a bit.

Lexi said “you need two uninjured hands for this. Don’t hurt your left arm any more than it already is.”

“‘Kay.”

**—————————————————**

After Sunny’s wounds had been successfully patched up, Lexi helped to tie up the green laces on her opponents boots. Then, the pair sat up.

A wide flight of stairs on one of the nearby hedges was quickly formed by some of the thorny vines.

Lexi took Sunny’s right arm in hers and began to walk up the vine’s stairs.

“Nope.” Sunny shook her head as she pulled her uninjured hand from her enemy’s grasp.

Lexi gave her a confused look.

“The thing is, I’m a hero. I don’t cheat,” Sunny said as she motioned to the top of the hedge in front of her.

“Walking on the tops of these hedges isn’t cheating,” Lexi argued.

“It’s cheating,” Sunny countered.

“I own this forest, so I say it’s not against the rules. It’s just a safe shortcut.”

“Heroes aren’t supposed to take ‘safe shortcuts’ we have to do hard work. We have to go through ridiculous struggles, and we have to do things the traditional way.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Evil people trying to slaughter everybody in their path, kidnapping people even when it’s not for ransom, and hating everything that makes the world a kind and beautiful place is pretty dumb too.”

Lexi sighed. “You have a good point…Goody Two Shoes.”

Sunny chuckled. “Yes I do, Evil…McEvil Face!”

Lexi held back a chuckle. “Evil McEvil Face? That’s what you want to go with?”

Sunny shrugged. “I mean, what else am I supposed to say?”

“Evil McEvil Face is perfect,” Lexi joked. “Go with that.”

Sunny grinned.

“Anyways,” Lexi said, returning to the point of their conversation. “Before you decide on actually accomplishing this maze, how about you see just how big this whole thing is.”

Lexi scooped up Sunny’s cloak from the ground, tossed it to its owner, and motioned for her enemy to follow her up the plant-made stairs.

Sunny walked up the vine stairs, surprised to find that they kept her balance. Then, she scanned the horizon. “Huh! Yeah, thats pretty big.”

The maze was a lot wider than it was long, and it curved around the edges of its obsidian island making its area hard to pinpoint. It was strange to see the entire maze from above. It defeated the entire purpose of the puzzle to stand on top of it. You ruined both the fun and the challenge.

“And you made all of this?” Sunny asked.

“Yes.”

“You must be so proud! Mapping this whole thing out must’ve taken forever!”

“Not really, the more mazes you make the easier it becomes.”

“Welp, guess I’m gonna have to go through this. I’ll bet it’ll take me…two hours and thirty six minutes.”

Ignoring the oddly specific time, Lexi mumbled intentionally loudly enough for Sunny to hear. “Too bad, you’re going to die.”

“I’m gonna what now?” Sunny asked.

“Oh,” Lexi casually replied. “The vines know now that you realize that they’re there. So, they’ll attack you…unless of course you’re standing by me.”

“So you’ll travel through this maze with me?” Sunny asked.

“No,” Lexi responded. “Either you take this opportunity to travel with me above these hedges or…” Lexi flicked a droplet of blood off of Sunny’s cloak. Before it even reached the ground, vines snapped it up like a frog’s tongue. “You die.”

Sunny frowned.

“Your choice,” Lexi said.

“You don’t have a spell that'll make these vines not attack me?”

“No. No spell is _that_ specific.”

Sunny crossed her arms with a humph. “Today I haven’t done any real heroicing yet. I got beat up by a dragon, then you saved me. I got attacked by vines, then you saved me. Now, I’m just about to do something even remotely hero-like, and that too would result in death.”  
Sunny looked down at the ground, she was pouting a little bit. Then, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t done anything that evil today. I’ve had pleasant conversations with you, the enemy. I’ve helped you with your wounds. And, I’ve saved your life at least one time.”

“That does make me feel a little better…” Sunny replied, looking up at her adversary.

“Then come on,” Lexi said. “You haven’t saved me from the most annoying princess in the world yet.”

To Lexi’s relief, Sunny forgot about nabbing her sword the nearby hedge of vines.

**—————————————————**

After a while of walking across bridges and hedges made of vines, the pair reached the end of the deadly maze and arrived at Lexi’s evil lair.

“Ya know, I expected something a lot spookier and more extravagant than this.”

“I didn’t have enough energy left to make something that cool after I set up my thorn forest and dragon dome.”

It was just a cave. A simple, cold, obsidian cave. Nothing more too it.

Throwing caution to the wind, Sunny walked down into the downwards sloping lair.

Lexi followed right after her.

The cave soon opened up into a large obsidian room. In the room was a large wooden desk with various magical supplies neatly resting on top of it. A fluffy red cotton bed sat in the corner of the lair. There was a bookshelf that’s shelves were filled with not just books but potions, too. A blue fire magically burned in a fire place on the right side of the room. A large, half broken chandelier hung from the center of the room. It was held up by an odd sticky teal substance. A few storage chests were strewn about. And, at the far side of the room, covered by old brown sheets, was a large bucket meant for bathing.

The biggest thing in the room, though, was an object that would have drawn anyone’s eyes. It was the large, rusty, foldable cage in the center back of the cave. It contained blankets, pillows, a relieving bucket, and a few books and toys to help stave off boredom.

The most unpleasant thing in the cage was a brown haired girl with dark blue eyes who was dressed in an obnoxiously poofy pink dress. She was princess Jessica, as made obvious by the golden crown atop her well-combed head.

The girl perked up when she saw Sunny. She pointed her finger at the girl and angrily said “Hey! Are you the person with the ransom money? It's about time you showed up!”

Lexi shook her head for Sunny. “She’s someone who will attempt to rescue you.”

“Ugh!” The royal girl groaned. “No wonder she’s not dressed in armor. She’s just some dumb peasant.”

Sunny frowned.

“Watch your tongue,” Lexi scolded.

The princess blew a raspberry at her.

“Ah, it seems you two get along fantastically,” Sunny sarcastically said.

“So!” The princess barked. “Are you two going to fight to death or what? I want to see something fun for a change!”

Lexi joined Sunny in her frown. 

The enchantress, of course, was expecting this. Lexi didn’t want it to happen, and hoped to spare the other girl’s life if she won. 

Sunny had entirely forgotten about this part. Sadly, the princess was right. If she was a hero, then killing Lexi had to occur. It would be a tough battle, but as a hero it was her duty to do it.

Reaching her hand into the crevice her sword was normally tucked in, Sunny could feel nothing but air.

_Uh-oh._

Frightfully, the young hero realized she had forgotten to grab her sword before leaving for Lexi’s lair.

On the other side of the room, Lexi tapped the spherical onyx at the top of her scepter. She could sense the fiery passion within it. The intense power. The dangerous magic. She could feel her energy flowing into the onyx, fueling the magical orb with whatever dastardly deed she wanted it to do.

Lowering her scepter to the ground, she brought out a small notebook from her pocket and two strands of yarn. She dropped these yarn strands to the ground and moved her scepter to press into them. 

Then, Lexi flipped to one of the first pages in her notebook and said “Serpenti, et consurgens chordas continet viridi puella luscus!”

The white strings under the orb of her scepter grew to a towering height. On one end of each of the strings the frayed yarn divided itself into two. The top half formed red eyes and the two halves formed into a fanged maw. They were snakes. Large, ruthless, towering, snakes.

Sunny wasted no time. Although weaponless, she was a creative girl. As stated previously, at times like these, she was typically good at coming up with clever, life-saving ideas. Sunny ran towards the fire place on the right side of the room and swiftly grabbed a poker, shoving the end of it into the blue fire. Almost instantly the end of her poker turned a blue shade.

Sunny grinned at the large white serpents. “Come and get me!”

The two serpents began slithering towards her. One was approaching her from her front side, the other from her backside. The snakes were five times as tall as Sunny, and their bodies were four times the size of her waist.

No doubt about it, this would be a tricky fight.

Sunny ran towards the first snake as it reared its massive head up. 

The creature’s fangs dripped with pink venom that seemed to slide down them like liquid in syringes. It lunged its head at her, but Sunny was an agile heroine and managed to duck. As the serpent’s head passed over her, Sunny pushed her poker into its white snake-like neck, sending a line of flames down the underside of it.

The beast didn’t seem to care. In fact, it didn’t even seem to notice its great gash. Actually, now that Sunny squinted at it, she couldn’t see any flesh come from the monster’s large poker-made cut. She simply saw burning frayed yarn.

The entire snake seemed to burst into flames. After all, it wasn’t made of blood or skin, it was made entirely out of yarn.

So wrapped up in enjoying her fiery accomplishment, Sunny didn’t notice the second snake creep up behind her. Sunny yelped in surprise. The second snake inserted its dripping pink fangs at the end of her cloak and rose the flailing girl up into the air.

Sunny watched as Lexi heaved a large wooden bucket full of water over the first snake. It put out the fire but also made the yarn serpent completely soaked, making it almost useless until it dried.

Beneath Sunny, the other serpent moved itself into a coiled up formation but it left a gap in between the center of the coil, like a doughnut. Then, without warning, it dropped Sunny, along with her poker, inside the gap in the middle of its long body. It proceeded to tighten itself like the vines, leaving Sunny squeezed and trapped by large coils of yarn.

Lexi sighed in relief. Sunny’s poker weapon was worrying, but the serpents had handled it well, or at least one of them had.

Suddenly, Sunny started screaming. “TOO HOT! TOO HOT!”

Lexi’s eyes widened. The hot end of Sunny’s poker must’ve been touching some part of her skin because of the yarn serpent tightening itself up. The villain ran over to her second serpent and tugged on its snakelike body, suggesting to the creature that it should let go of Sunny. So, it did.

As soon as the serpents hold on her had loosened, Sunny wasted no time. She speedily climbed up to the snakes head and used her poker like a sword to decapitate it. The two parts of the yarn snake fell on the ground like a corpse. Its head and neck were aflame much like the other snake had been.

“You really ought to learn when somebody’s bluffing, Lexi,” Sunny said to her terrified opponent.

In shock, Lexi realized that the poker hadn’t actually been touching Sunny. The heroine had merely pretended the hot weapon was touching her in anticipation that Lexi would come to aid her. Sunny had said that heroes weren’t supposed to cheat. What a hypocrite.

The two girls heard laughs of amusement from the nearby princess.

Sunny hoped down from the dead yarn serpent and proceeded to rush at her rival.

In turn, Lexi ran away from Sunny.

As the villain was evading her enemy, she looked back at Sunny. Her opponent was a lot stronger than her and was catching up to her with ease. Clearly she wanted her dead. Perhaps Lexi needed to think of Sunny as a larger threat.

Lexi pointed her scepter at her adversary and said “sit rursus mortis lux toto corde suo!” Instantly, a bolt of lightning shot out of her wand towards Sunny.

The hero dodged right in time. However, the bolt of white light seared her cloak and dress.

Lexi tried to fire at her again. This time the bolt was smaller. Lexi was loosing her energy quickly.

This time, Sunny was too slow to dodge the bolt. On instinct she grabbed the closest thing she could find and held it over her face for some sort of protection. She had grabbed an old glass mirror.

Rather than the lightening striking the mirror, it bounced off of it. The mirror was at such a perfect angle that when the bolt had been deflected, it charred the weird teal goop holding up the chandelier in the middle of the room. The half-broken chandelier crashed down towards the ground and slid right on top of a young enchantress, who just happened to be standing directly below it.

It was safe to say that Lexi was very unlucky. The only fortunate part of the whole ordeal was that the chandelier’s flames had been blown out when it fell.

The caged up princess cheered at Sunny and snickered at her captor.

Lexi’s arms were roughly pinned her sides. She tried to stagger upwards but the chandelier was too heavy, and she was too weak. Pieces of broken glass covered her hair and roughly poked into her flesh.

The winner walked towards her bested rival.

The enchantress looked away. Getting defeated by an inexperienced hero would elicit shame in any villain.

Sunny tilted Lexi’s head up and grabbed one of the biggest, sharpest pieces of glass that had broken off from the chandelier. She held it to her enemies neck.

“Kill her! Kill her!” Princess Jessica joyfully chanted.

The sharp piece of glass made a bead of blood appear on Lexi’s neck.

Time lazily rolled by. The slow and steady passing of each second didn’t match Lexi’s quick heartbeat. And, the invisible clock that reality goes by was unwilling to pause itself for Sunny to make her decision. Time simply continued. One second faded into the next second, which faded into the following second, which faded into yet another second. In the big picture, lives seem to be just as short as the seconds that pass by.

A minute of complete silence went by.

The crimson bead was now halfway down Lexi’s neck.

In frustration, princess Jessica grabbed a small rock near her cage and threw it at Sunny’s head. “Hey! Dumb peasant! Kill her already! The sooner I can get back to to my castle the better.”

A few more seconds passed by.

“You know, when I get back home I could have you killed for making me wait this long. Hurry it up already!”

Sunny spoke after she said that. “Lexi, I’m beginning to think being a hero sucks a bit.”

Lexi didn’t respond.

“I originally became a hero because I thought it was fun, and sometimes it is fun. But, today the small amount of hero stuff I’ve done has been really hard and unfun. As a hero, I have to get into really dangerous life threatening situations, even when it's silly to get into them. As a hero, I have to kill you…but you’re nice, friendly, and really pretty, so I don’t want to. As a hero, I’m supposed to rescue and please this brat of a princess. Honestly, I would rather her die than rescue her.”

“I am not a brat!” Princess Jessica roared.

Sunny removed the shard of glass from Lexi’s neck and stood up.

Lexi let herself look at her adversary.

“Now,” Sunny said with a confident grin. “Are you gonna help me lift this chandelier off of you or what?”

Lexi gave her a small smile.

With the combined effort of the two, they lifted the chandelier off of Lexi.

“I will have your heads impaled on spikes for this!” A very upset princess shouted.

“Shut up!” Lexi yelled back.

“Okay,” Sunny said, beaming at her ‘enemy’. “Quick question: can we ride on your dragon?”

“Of course,” Lexi replied.

“Great!” Sunny exclaimed. “I know a tavern filled with drunk adults, an okay bard, and some average quality milk. Do ya wanna fly there?”

“Do they serve orange juice?”

“Yep!”

“Then let me pick this glass out of my face and we can get going.”

“Whoo hoo!” Sunny cheerfully said, waving her poker in the air.

“How dare you leave me here! I’m the princess! You’re supposed to rescue me!” Princess Jessica shouted as she pointed accusingly at Sunny.

“Yeah, but I’ve resigned from my position of being a hero,” Sunny countered. “That isn’t my job anymore.”

The furious princess pelted another pebble at the cheerful girl. Luckily, it missed.

As Sunny put out the fire that was burning on the corpse of the second serpent, Lexi smiled.

Sunny was right, being a hero was too overrated. And on the same note, so was being a villain. Lexi never had entirely fit that role before. Not to say she was a good person now. No, she was still evil, just perhaps not to such an extreme extent.

Wherever this was headed, being pals with Sunny was going to be fun. Lexi was sure of it. She was not sure, however, what would happen to the Princess.

“Wait,” Sunny said “how are we gonna wake up your dragon?”

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for the good grammar goes to my mom. She helped me edit this.


End file.
